


The red, red rose and the briar

by belmanoir



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-04
Updated: 2012-04-04
Packaged: 2017-11-03 00:59:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bunny and Raffles go to one of Dr. Watson's book-signings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The red, red rose and the briar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taz/gifts).



> Written for Yuletide '08.
> 
> Franzi provided an awesome historical-voice beta. Any remaining errors or convolutions are mine.

It was early spring, and all the town was in an uproar over the latest case solved by the great consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes. I do not believe that his friend and biographer Dr. Watson ever deigned to immortalize that particular mystery in prose, and perhaps it held little in the way of narrative interest; but as it concerned some of the highest names in the kingdom, it was the subject of much discussion in those circles of society in which, at the time, Raffles and I still moved freely. 

I myself had developed rather a sad case of hero-worship for the great detective, and not a little fear that he would someday be the undoing of me and my friend. Raffles assured me repeatedly that our burglaries were too petty to attract his sought-after attention, and I tried to believe him. But for several months, whenever I held the light and the little bottle of oil, I was unable to focus on Raffles's working hands for wondering whether I had left a strand of hair on the steps, or a distinctively-worn shoe-print in the dust of the pavement.

My unusual attack of nerves (I do not think I flatter myself in terming it so, for while anticipation or reaction might make me tremble, I was generally steady as a rock in the event) was perhaps partly responsible for our slow season. We had made enough out of our last few cribs to see us through to summer, and for once Raffles let ambition play non-striker to enjoyment. 

One evening, as we returned arm-in-arm from dinner at one of our clubs, Raffles asked if we might make a slight detour into Piccadilly. The night was warm and (when not hidden by clouds like a dark-lantern by its shutter) a half-moon cast a particularly bewitching brightness over the gaslit streets. I saw no reason to refuse. No reason, that is, until Raffles stopped before my bookseller's front steps. The little shop was overflowing with gentlemen and ladies in evening dress, and I knew very well why. 

A collection of Dr. Watson's tales had come off the presses that morning, in the form of a slim leather volume with gilt accents. I had placed an order for it at the bookseller's long since, and even wished that I might attend tonight's gathering and see my book signed by its author. Prudence (which is said to be the better part of valor, though Raffles tried to make me believe it cowardice often enough) had won out with me, and I had set the day-dream aside without much regret. 

But Raffles must have seen me sighing over the advertisement in the morning's paper as I buttered my toast. "Come, Bunny, where's the harm?" he asked with that daredevil smile I had come to love and dread with equal fervor. "You may even contrive an introduction to the god of your idolatry." He pointed, and I saw with horror that Holmes himself stood in the corner of the shop, his lean frame towering half-a-head above the admiring throng.

"For God's sake, Raffles, let us be gone," I said in low tones, and turned hastily to make my escape.

Raffles caught my elbow in a grip of iron. "Better to brazen it out than to be seen retreating in bad order," he said lower yet, and with a hand on the small of my back he propelled me into the shop. "I'll even pay for your copy, if you like," he said louder.

I bristled at that, as he must have known I would. "No _thank_ you," I told him in a fine show of independence, and marched to the counter to claim my book. 

As we waited in the queue before Dr. Watson's desk, I stared quite openly at Holmes--to do otherwise at such a gathering could not but call attention to me. I was struck by the sleuth's general appearance of ill health. He was pale; the sweat stood out on his forehead; and there was, in the movement of his hands and head, something altogether feverish. 

"Do you suppose he is ill?" I asked Raffles in a whisper. Surely Holmes's friend and physician would not have allowed him to leave his bed if it were serious; yet it was clear from his accounts that Dr. Watson held as little sway with his masterful friend as I held with mine, and perhaps his pleading had been in vain.

But Raffles only chuckled. "What a little innocent you are, rabbit!" he whispered back. "He's only been sampling that seven-percent solution he's so fond of." There was a measure of scorn in his words. Raffles rarely drank, and certainly nothing stronger was ever permitted to interfere with the workings of that keen mind. 

"Innocent" was a word I could hardly claim, thief that I was; yet it was always my lot to be surprised by things that could no longer really shock me. As I looked at Holmes again, it was evident that Raffles was right. Anyone but I must have seen it at a glance. 

"Steady on, Bunny, I'm going to fetch us some of those lilliputian sandwiches," Raffles murmured, and abandoned me to my vigil. But it was nearly ten o'clock, and we had missed the rush; all in all, no more than five minutes saw me in front of my literary colleague and professional foe. My shyness, I believe, was more for the former than the latter as I slid his book over the desk. 

He opened it without looking at me and scrawled his name across the title page. "If you want Holmes's autograph, there he is." Dr. Watson's mouth twisted below the military mustache. "But you may have trouble getting to him through the crowd." 

I followed his pointing finger--and my blood ran cold in my veins. Standing beside Mr. Holmes, his black curls tumbling over his forehead, and sharp wickedness in every angle and curve of his profile as he leaned in to whisper in the detective's ear--was Raffles! Holmes's eyes glittered as he listened.

I nearly groaned aloud at my friend's folly. I did not know his plan, but I knew without knowing that it could easily be the ruin of us both. I knew, too, that Raffles was even now inwardly laughing at my terror. I called him many black names in my heart, but I think that my voice was steady enough as I thanked Dr. Watson and said, "I believe I shall try." 

I was bitterly determined to do it, too. I had never been able to save myself from Raffles, so it is a mystery why I thought that--now of all times--I might save him from himself. But I would have fought through the crowed, played the humble worshiper desperate for the great man's signature, and then, somehow, found a pretext to drag Raffles away with me. I would have, if at that moment the two men, master thief and master detective, had not pushed their own way through the crowd and disappeared out the door. Dr. Watson and I watched in, I believe, equally horrified astonishment.

I did not dare to follow them for fear of throwing off Raffles's no-doubt delicate game. Nor did I wish to make my own way home when Raffles might yet have need of my assistance--or when, at the least, Holmes might return with painful tidings. So I waited and pretended an interest in first editions of Scott while fear and resentment, like the red, red rose and the briar, twined a true love knot in my breast. 

An hour later the bookseller closed up his shop. I loitered on the steps until Dr. Watson came out in company with the merchant. "You promised me Mr. Holmes," he said fussily.

"I'm very sorry," Dr. Watson said. "He must have been called away on a case; there can be no other explanation. I know he was very much looking forward to this evening."

Raffles had left me holding the bag when more useful company proffered itself often enough that I easily recognized the good doctor's particular brand of mortification. Natural sympathy, combined with the habits acquired as Raffles's second, made me now _his_ accomplice. 

"Indeed," I said, "my friend was called away with him, and I believe it must be something to do with his sister. She was the victim of a particularly gruesome murder, and Mr. Holmes has been kind enough to look into the matter."

The bookseller appeared a little mollified; at any rate, he muttered that great men often behaved unaccountably and locked us out. "Thank you," Dr. Watson said gruffly once the little man was out of earshot within his shop.

I made some reply; I no longer remember what.

"It would serve him right if I went home without him." But the resignation with which he settled on the stoop was all the proof I needed that Watson was as deep in the thrall of his brilliant friend as I was in my own's. I took my place beside him with a sigh. "Holmes never _will_ understand the importance of selling books," he grumbled after a moment. "How he imagines we pay our rent I don't know."

"I had always supposed his consulting practice a lucrative one," I said in some surprise.

"Oh, not on your life!" Watson exclaimed. "Naturally I don't say so in my accounts--there's no purpose to _encouraging_ clients who can't pay--but a good two-thirds of his work is _pro bono publico_. Let a prince of the blood and a scullery maid arrive at the same moment, and if the serving girl has the prettier problem he'll show the prince the door. It's my practice and my memoirs that pay for his dinner, yet he seems to regard both in the light of frivolous interruptions of his work."

I could hardly enter into the particularities of this resentment; I was always painfully aware that while Raffles would do very well for himself without me, without him I should be ruined within the month. But it was a simple matter to enter into the generalities. Moreover, though I am ashamed to own it, it occurred to me that Dr. Watson's good graces might prove invaluable if Raffles had done something rash. 

"These brilliant men are all the same," I said. "Raffles is forever behaving as though, because I cannot match him for genius, I must be as unable to match him for sense. If I try to rein in one of his mad starts he calls me small."

"Precisely!" Dr. Watson exclaimed. "But without me, I doubt Holmes would have survived his first year of sleuthing. My service revolver has saved his life a dozen times, and my care has saved his health; yet he persists in behaving as though _he_ were doing _me_ a favor in unlocking for me the intricacies of his methods."

"But surely he appreciates your accounts of his work," I suggested. "He calls you his Boswell, after all--"

"Yes, and in such patronizing accents that I should like to hit him," Dr. Watson said. "He's far more likely to complain that I devoted too many words to my wife, or that I described Charing Cross mud as red instead of brown and threw off his entire argument. I verily believe he has no idea how much of him I soften in my narratives so as to keep the sympathies of the reading public on his side." (I wonder, as I write down those words, what Raffles would think of my own portrait of him. Would he find it a fair likeness? I never imagined, at the time, that the day would come when I could publish our doings. I believe that I was envious in my heart of Dr. Watson, with the envy of a frustrated artist. Now I would give anything to feel that envy still.) 

If Raffles and I had shared a profession more innocent, I firmly believe that I should have poured my heart out to Dr. Watson. But I could give no details that would not incriminate us; as far as the good doctor knew, I was the dullard hanger-on of a brilliant cricketer, and in that capacity I had, in truth, nothing with which to reproach Raffles. 

But as for Raffles the criminal--as for the habitual reserve, the unnecessary secrecy, the self-importance and egoism--all, in short, of Raffles's least amiable characteristics--if I _had_ been able to unburden myself, I saw clearly that here was the man who might have understood and sympathized. And I was ashamed, both for what I was, and for wishing to be something other so that I might with impunity blacken the name of my dearest friend. Yet I could not resist asking with something like despair, "Why--why don't you throw him over?"

Dr. Watson was silent a long time. "I did without him for three years. I can bear any petty humiliation when I remember that."

I recalled then that Holmes had long been presumed dead. My imagination was not slow to show me myself in the same circumstances. My heart went out to Dr. Watson--as I hope, if he is reading this, his goes out to me, unworthy of his compassion though I may be. But before I could utter a word, voices echoed down the street; I and Dr. Watson turned toward the sound like faithful hounds who hear their masters approaching. 

I started up in relief when I saw that Raffles walked beside him. I examined him from head to toe for clues to his doings in recent hours; there was some mud on his trousers and his hair was blown about from the wind, but that was all. He came towards me with a contrition so natural that I almost believed in it myself. 

"There, Bunny, I'm a beast for haring off like that. We lost track of time, don't you know; it's awfully good of you to have waited. Goodnight, Mr. Holmes, it's been a pleasure." 

With that he took my arm, and would have pulled me off without another word if I had not, for once, stood my ground and offered my dishonorable hand to the man whom I still believe to be one of the greatest I have ever met. "Thank you, Dr. Watson," I told him. "I shall look forward to reading more of your work."

He shook it. "Do you write yourself?"

I flushed. "Some. Not of your caliber, you understand, but--"

He smiled. "If you ever need an introduction to my publishers, I should be more than happy to oblige." It was an offer which I treasured for years without ever supposing I would have occasion to use it. Let it be recorded that in the event, I had the grace not to try it.

"You seemed mighty cozy," Raffles said when we were round the corner and out of hearing. "Been making friends against the inevitable unmasking, have you?"

I almost put it down to jealousy--but I could not credit it. Raffles knew too well how little he had to fear. Whatever his motives, the question was unworthy of him, and I told him so with a dignity that no doubt deserved his laughter.

"Well, Bunny," he said when it subsided, "I didn't forget about _you,_ you know, though it must have looked it. Your watch is scratched, isn't it?"

It happened that it was, and the gold-plating of the chain worn thin. I did not see what that had to do with anything until Raffles pulled a smart new timepiece out of his pocket and dangled it before me.

"I lifted it for you, Bunny," he said with a smile.

"From--?" My horror was too great to finish the sentence.

"From the man himself," he confirmed blithely. "Oh, Bunny, don't look so appalled. He had his suspicions of us, you know."

My sentiments may be imagined. "And now you've gone and confirmed them, you reckless devil!" I said in a savage whisper.

But he was unmoved. "Precisely. I know my man, Bunny. I don't flatter myself I'm his peer for brain; but there is something similar in the _cast_ of our minds. I'd swear my oath that if I had left it a mystery, he would have given his all to finding absolute proof of our guilt. Besides, I didn't merely lift his watch, Bunny. I've the means to discredit him now if I so choose. He'll leave us alone."

And to all my eager inquiries he would make no further reply, but fastened Holmes's watch and chain to my waistcoat with his own hands. It was folly, it was madness; but his smile said he knew it, and I wore the watch ever after. I am wearing it now.


End file.
